Category

Published on

08 Aug 2017

Abstract

In the past decade, many researchers have studied mechanical properties of polymer reinforced nanocomposites to understand and improve the performance of materials. In this research, we would develop a tool that would test the mechanical features of the structure of the nanocomposite called Crystalline Nano Cellulose. Crystalline Nano Cellulose (CNC) is a strong and natural molecular structure that we could obtain from processing a regular cellulose cell we could obtain from ordinary plants through acid hydrolysis. The mechanical test on these structures of CNC would be able to provide information about the type of failure and the effect of length and arrangement of CNC structures on the mechanical properties. The main goal to the research is to evaluate the effect of CNC aspect ratio (length / width), the effect of angular distribution and the effect of microstructure on the mechanical properties. A tool would be built on nanoHUB that would be using Python as the programming language and Rappture as the GUI designer. The tool would accept user’s input on molecule length, the variance of the length, angular alignment of the molecules and variance of the angle values. In addition, the tool would accept these parameters to produce a visualization of the structure specified, run a mechanical test on the structure and provide a graphical feedback. The goal of the tool is to help fellow researcher who pursue a research in similar topic, students who needed help in learning the mechanical features of CNC structures with a quick and accurate detail.